Vigil, series 2, review: the stakes are thrillingly sky-high but Suranne Jones still grates
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The first series of Vigil was the BBC’s most-watched new drama in years. Can 13 million viewers be wrong? Yes. What were you all thinking?
Well, it’s back for series two and Suranne Jones is at it again: barging around annoying the Armed Forces. This time she’s on an airbase in the Middle East. Her modus operandi is the same, the main differences being that in this series she wears aviators and people can get away from her because they’re not trapped on a submarine.
To give the show its due, it starts with a great set piece. In Scotland, Air Vice-Marshal Marcus Grainger (Dougray Scott) is showing off the RAF’s latest drone technology to some visiting potentates. It’s a training exercise which ends in horror when one of the machines goes rogue and starts gunning people down. Someone has taken control of it and only one woman can solve the mystery.
Enter DCI Amy Silva (Jones), who reminds us within the first minute that she’s a mother in a same-sex relationship by doing the school run and telling her daughter, who is complaining about the bad behaviour of a boy at school: “Does he know your mother and her girlfriend are both police officers?”
Three episodes will be released on the iPlayer on Sunday; the concluding three next Sunday. Writer Tom Edge has come up with a good plot. Instead of claustrophobia, this time he plays on our fear of technology running out of control.
It’s not stupidly implausible like series one, although anyone who works in the police/Armed Forces will probably watch with gritted teeth (do armed officers really shout the all-clear within one second of entering a suspect’s premises and before checking behind the door or in the wardrobe?) and you may wonder why a hitman can’t hit three slow-moving targets who are right in front of him.
There is a total blackout on reporting the drone fatalities, but that doesn’t stop Silva’s girlfriend sharing the details with the first person she arrests.
That’s DI Kirsten Longacre (Rose Leslie), who is investigating the Scottish end of things and clambering over balconies while heavily pregnant. Less of the drippy romance between these two would be welcome.
The drama has wimped out on setting this in a real Middle Eastern country, instead inventing somewhere called Wudyan. Romola Garai is good as the brittle, humourless squadron leader in charge of the foreign air base. She’s irritated by Silva’s presence, and who can blame her?
